Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Hall Spars Announces SCR/S Airfoil Carbon Rigging

Hall Spars & Rigging introduces the first-ever carbon rigging product with an ultra-low-drag airfoil shape. The new SCR/S — Seamless Carbon Rigging/Streamlined — is the next generation of the highly successful SCR product and is designed specifically for projects looking for the maximum edge in speed.

"This idea was in development well before we introduced SCR last November," says Eric Hall, president of Hall Spars & Rigging. "This year, we raced with SCR/S on Rampant, our chartered Rodger Martin 36, for the entire season. Combining this with fatigue and tensile testing in the lab, we confirmed the great potential of SCR/S."

A year ago Hall introduced SCR, the first reliable solid round carbon rigging product to hit the market. It is the smallest, lowest-windage composite rigging available. Thanks to a proprietary terminal attachment process for which there are international patents pending, SCR also boasts the most compact composite rigging end fittings available.

Hall SCR round rod has 15% less frontal area/windage than its nearest carbon rigging market competitor. Airfoil-shaped SCR/S just reduced that to 50% less windage. Since standing rigging is the main source of rig windage, this reduction will give any boat a quantifiable speed improvement.

"At Hall, we're obsessed with windage reduction," says Eric Hall. "With SCR/S we've taken windage reduction in rigging to its limit. It will be hard to beat," says Hall.

Hall Spars & Rigging will formally introduce SCR/S at the METS show in Amsterdam Nov. 17-19, 2009. The SCR product is a finalist in the 2009 DAME awards competition.

How is this going to work? Surely the 'rods' need to be either aligned with the AWA to reduce drag or a few degree off to create lift.... If they are aligned fore and aft in the boat they will only be useful through the tacks when the AWA swings through 0'.

When sailing upwind at a AWA of, say 35', the foil is surely stalled and will cause more drag than a circular section and that will get worse and worse until the foil will actually give you negative lift, i.e drive in the opposite direction than the rest of your sail plan!